A few weeks ago we launched the final conference of #pubarchMED project. It has been a bit over three years of intense work. I am afraid the end of the road will not come in April as it should, but little by little the outcomes of the project will see the light and hopefully help continue building a better management of archaeological heritage. This has been a good part of the work I could do these first two months of the year.
I will not write much about the conference itself. A virtual, dynamic and free event that will use social media and interactive formats to overcome the tedium of most academic conference I have attended last year in the virtual context Covid-19 has brought us. The model, although slightly different, has been festivalCHAT (in which I had the honor to collaborate too). Now let’s hope it is as successful. You can find all the information about the conference in this same web (tag right over this), but in short, it is going to be mostly visual (photo essays), and participative through networking events and open round tables. Another important detail we wanted to bring up was inclusivity, with the call in several languages, possibility to participate in different formats (and flexibly), no cost, alternative solutions for possible problems, etc. The result, we will see in April… so far, so good.
Besides developing the whole thing (it involves a lot of writing and emailing, as we are a team of over 20 people, but the technical stuff is on me), these weeks have been very intense in other lines of the project and personal stuff. Together with Pedro, we have been polishing and analysing data for an article about citations in public archaeology that comes from the collection of bibliographic materials for the project, I have advanced in the writing of a couple of other articles and the analysis of the interviews, and I am also writing as hell to finish a divulgative book about Prehistory that will hopefully see the light this year (in Spanish, sorry).
But I guess the most important of all tasks has been applying for new contracts, as the current one is due by the end of April. And it does not look very good… This makes me reflect once more about the precarity of research and the difficulties to maintain a stable carreer until well into your 40s (if you get there professionally). This fast science model is not sustainable nor healthy. But guess we need to survive it to relax and work in peace. Will see how this all comes out.